“It is incredible how much prejudice have been allowed to operate in favor of meat, while so many facts are opposed to the pretended necessity of is use.”

Philippe Hecquet, MD 1661-1737

“There is no question that vegetarian diets are as healthy as you can get. The evidence is so strong and overwhelming and produced over such a long periods of time that it’s no longer debatable.”

Marion Nestle, Ph.D., former chairwoman of the nutrition department of New York University.

“A well planned vegetarian diet rich in fruits and vegetables plays a role in reducing the risk of all the major causes of illness and death.”

Walther Willett, MD, Chairman of the Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health

“Another good reason to get your nutrition from plant sources is animals tend to concentrate pesticides and other chemicals in their meat and milk. Plant foods have much less contamination.”

Benjamin Spock, MD 1903-1998

“There is virtually no evidence that drinking two or three glasses of milk a day reduces the chances of osteoporosis or breaking a bone.”

Walter C. Willet, MD, Chairman of the Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health

“The risk of osteoporosis can be lowered by reducing sodium, eating more fruits and vegetables, exercising, and getting plenty of calcium from plant sources. Many long-term studies (including one by the American Dairy Association) conclude dairy products lower calcium in the body and increase bone loss and fractures because of excess protein. Casein, which makes up 87% of cow milk protein, consistently and strongly promotes all stages of cancer.”

The Diet Revolution by John Robbins

“Vegetarians have lower rates of death from ischemic heart disease; lower blood cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and lower rates of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and prostate and colon cancer and are less likely than meat-eaters to be obese.”

American Dietetic Association

“No chemical carcinogen is nearly so important in causing human cancer as animal protein.”

T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D., The China Study, the most comprehensive research on health and nutrition with human subjects in history, conducted collaboratively by Cornell University, Oxford University, and the Chinese Academy of Preventative Medicine.

Dispelling the Need for Animal Protein Myth: “Eating an adequate number of calories per day made up of any normal variety of plant foods provides all the protein humans need.”

Conclusion of The China Study, the most comprehensive research on health and nutrition with human subjects in history, conducted collaboratively by Cornell University, Oxford University, and the Chinese Academy of Preventative Medicine.

“As environmental science has advanced, it has become apparent that the human appetite for animal flesh is a driving force behind virtually every major category of environmental damage now threatening the human future: deforestation, erosion, fresh water scarcity, air and water pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss, social injustice, the destabilization of communities, and the spread of disease.

Worldwatch Institute, “Is Meat Sustainable?”

“Animal agriculture accounts for 50% of the water consumed in the U.S. It emits two-thirds of the world’s acid-rain-causing ammonia, and is the world’s largest source of water pollution -- killing entire river and marine ecosystems, destroying coral reefs, and of course, making people sick.”

National Audubon Society

In 2000, the World Commission on Water predicted the increase in water use in the future due to rising population will “impose intolerable stresses on the environment, leading not only to a loss of biodiversity, but also to a vicious circle in which the stresses on the ecosystem will no longer provide the services necessary for plants and people.”

World Commission on Water

“The human spirit is not dead. It lives on in secret..it has come to believe that compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.”

Albert Schweitzer, MD, PhD. 1875-1965 Philosopher, Theologian, Nobel Laureate

“The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

Mahatma Gandhi

“If there is to be a bright future for our children and grandchildren, it will come from consumer support of producers who work in concert with nature - organically, sustainably and humanely.”

Howard Lyman, former cattle rancher, president of EarthSave International and co-defendant with Oprah Winfrey in lawsuit with Texas Cattlemen.

“The process of gradual blocking of the coronary arteries begins not in adulthood, but in childhood and the main cause of this arteriosclerosis is the steadily increasing amount of fat in the American diet, particularly “saturated” animals fats found in meat, chicken, milk, and cheeses. If there was another disease that caused half a million deaths a year, you can be sure that the public would be acutely aware of the danger, and that the cure or prevention would be practiced universally.”

Benjamin Spock, MD 1903-1998

“The human body has absolutely no requirement for flesh.”

Michael Klaper, MD http://www.vegsource.com/klaper/bio.htm

“Animal source food is adaptive when there’s not enough food [like an ice age] but in a world with abundant and diverse plant foods, animal source food is obsolete and only causes problems.”

William Harris, MD http://www.pcrm.org/magazine/GM01Autumn/GM01Autumn13.html

“You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson in Fate

“I don’t understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open and put them on powerful cholesterol lowering drugs for the rest of their lives.”

Dean Ornish, MD http://www.webmd.com/content/pages/4/3080_453

“When your children are adults, and in the prime of their lives, who’s going to tell them that their clogged arteries, malignancies, and degenerating bodies could so easily have been prevented with the knowledge you possessed when they were young?”

Charles Attwood, MD 1932-1998 http://www.ivu.org/people/writers/scientists.html

“An alien ecologist observing Earth might conclude that cattle is the dominant animal species in our biosphere.”

David Hamilton Wright, Ph.D., Emory University biologist

“Methane is 21 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO2. Animal agriculture produces more than 100 million tons of methane a year. About 85% of this methane is produced in the digestive processes of livestock. The collective effect on the environment of the hundreds of millions of livestock animals worldwide is enormous”

Information Unit on Climate Change (IUCC), May 1993

“Shifts to a vegetarian diet lower greenhouse gas emissions much more quickly than shifts away from fossil fuel burning technologies that emit carbon dioxide. Unlike carbon dioxide which can remain in the air for more than a century, methane cycles out of the atmosphere in just eight years, so lower methane emissions quickly translate to cooling of the earth.”

Information Unit on Climate Change (IUCC), May 1993

“Vast quantities of land are needed to produce steak and pork chops. Animal agriculture takes up 70% of all agricultural land, and 30% of total land surface on the planet.”

2006 United Nations Report

“Nothing will benefit human health and increase changes of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.”

Albert Einstein, 1879-1955

“...animals...are a sacred trust to us from our Heavenly Father. They are dumb and cannot speak for themselves”

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Change: Slow, but sure...

from NYTimes.com